3080 FTW Ultra poor improvement over 1080ti FTW

[Rom]

Hi,


I was lucky enough to get a FTW Ultra this week, but so far, regretting my purchase.

Now i knew there would be some CPU bottle neck, but the main game i play shows little improvement at all over my 1080ti FTW.


Ill post my specs, what ive got in which games etc. Hopefully there is some ideas, if not, think ill be selling my 3080. As dont really want to build a new pc until Intel offer a new CPU, with PCIe 4/5, which is apparently 2022!. Seems counter intuitive to build one now, when I cant even make use of the new PCIe 4 M2 drives etc. Its not like my pc is terrible, or unplayable, I just thought a fancy new GPU would get me to my 140 fps target.


Maximus Hero 8

6700k @ 4.5ghz

32gb Corsair @ 3200mhz

Samsung M2 SSD

EVGA 1080ti FTW / EVGA 3080 FTW Ultra (not at the same time!)

1440p / 144 hz


My main game is Escape from Tarkov, which i gather is not very well optimised. Then the odd bit of BF5.

Ive not changed any settings in games (unless it was super sample / DXR for testing). Base settings are Borderless, tested on same maps, same place etc. 39


1080ti

Tarkov 90-105 fps. Fullscreen gives me 115 fps solid. 45% CPU 90% GPU usage (Fullscreen menu gives me 260+fps)

If i super sample to 2x 70 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 60-70% CPU 90% GPU. This seems capped, might have set it to 140 for gsync in a file somewhere and forgot about it?

Witcher 3 85-90 fps. 99% GPU


3080

Tarkov 110-120 fps. 60% CPU 60% GPU. Fullscreen only increase 5 fps. (Fullscreen menu only 140 ish?!)

Super sample 2x 90-100 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 80-90% CPU. DXR on 130-135 fps. Again, think ive capped this in a cfg somewhere @ 140 for gsync years ago

Witcher 3 120-130 fps. 99% GPU, now this is an decent gain!


Witcher has a decent improvement, kind of what I hoped for in Tarkov. Ive logged in HWinfo, and Tarkov cpu will spike to 82%, but mostly its sat around 60% on the 3080. Now BOTTLENECK i hear and know, but BF5 CPU sits 80% plus a lot of the time, and gets more fps. Is this just poor optimisation? Can i do anything to fix it?

Tarkov doesnt have many settings to even ramp up, and make the card work harder.

I have the power level for card to 105%, PerfCap is VRel, card is drawing close to 400W, its not limiting to thermal or power. When i say CPU use, im checking cores, not just overall. So 1 core isnt maxxing out etc.


Hoping someone has some ideas, right now, i have a very fancy GPU for in my eyes, not much gain in the game i play.


Thanks

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Check individual cores/threads for bottlenecking, not overall CPU usage... you can hit 100% on the main thread (or indeed others) long before you hit 100% utilisation of the whole CPU.

Simply put if your GPU is sat at 60% you have a severe bottleneck, most likely the CPU. Comparisons between BFV and Tarkov are irrelevant because they are different games, different engines and don't use the CPU equally.

So ultimately those games not hitting 99-100% GPU usage show you are bottle necked elsewhere, likely (but not necessarily always) the CPU.

 

[meerkat_near]

Hi,


I was lucky enough to get a FTW Ultra this week, but so far, regretting my purchase.

Now i knew there would be some CPU bottle neck, but the main game i play shows little improvement at all over my 1080ti FTW.


Ill post my specs, what ive got in which games etc. Hopefully there is some ideas, if not, think ill be selling my 3080. As dont really want to build a new pc until Intel offer a new CPU, with PCIe 4/5, which is apparently 2022!. Seems counter intuitive to build one now, when I cant even make use of the new PCIe 4 M2 drives etc. Its not like my pc is terrible, or unplayable, I just thought a fancy new GPU would get me to my 140 fps target.


Maximus Hero 8

6700k @ 4.5ghz

32gb Corsair @ 3200mhz

Samsung M2 SSD

EVGA 1080ti FTW / EVGA 3080 FTW Ultra (not at the same time!)

1440p / 144 hz


My main game is Escape from Tarkov, which i gather is not very well optimised. Then the odd bit of BF5.

Ive not changed any settings in games (unless it was super sample / DXR for testing). Base settings are Borderless, tested on same maps, same place etc. 39


1080ti

Tarkov 90-105 fps. Fullscreen gives me 115 fps solid. 45% CPU 90% GPU usage (Fullscreen menu gives me 260+fps)

If i super sample to 2x 70 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 60-70% CPU 90% GPU. This seems capped, might have set it to 140 for gsync in a file somewhere and forgot about it?

Witcher 3 85-90 fps. 99% GPU


3080

Tarkov 110-120 fps. 60% CPU 60% GPU. Fullscreen only increase 5 fps. (Fullscreen menu only 140 ish?!)

Super sample 2x 90-100 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 80-90% CPU. DXR on 130-135 fps. Again, think ive capped this in a cfg somewhere @ 140 for gsync years ago

Witcher 3 120-130 fps. 99% GPU, now this is an decent gain!


Witcher has a decent improvement, kind of what I hoped for in Tarkov. Ive logged in HWinfo, and Tarkov cpu will spike to 82%, but mostly its sat around 60% on the 3080. Now BOTTLENECK i hear and know, but BF5 CPU sits 80% plus a lot of the time, and gets more fps. Is this just poor optimisation? Can i do anything to fix it?

Tarkov doesnt have many settings to even ramp up, and make the card work harder.

I have the power level for card to 105%, PerfCap is VRel, card is drawing close to 400W, its not limiting to thermal or power. When i say CPU use, im checking cores, not just overall. So 1 core isnt maxxing out etc.


Hoping someone has some ideas, right now, i have a very fancy GPU for in my eyes, not much gain in the game i play.


Thanks

I had an issue once where my RAM down clocked to base setting of 2133mhz. This can severely limit performance so i would check this in your bios.

 

[tyler_jrb]

Could just be the game is poorly optimised for the new cards. Tends to happen with brand new launches and will likely change as the cards and drivers mature a bit.

As above check individual cores/threads for cpu bottlenecking and perhaps go from there. Increase speed etc. 6700k should do more than 4.5ghz imo.

 

[SnR3]

No matter what graphic card u put there Escape of tharkov is awefully optimised and heavily CPU bound.
I'd do what someone here already proposed - check invidual cores usage and u are very likely to find your bottleneck out there. U want more FPS out of this game get better single core performance.
U claim your pc ain't outdated but tbh 6700k is 20-40% depend on game in 1080p from 10900k performance.
Do u really want to wait what intel will show in 2022? I'd go for zen3

 

[Rom]

I did say Ive checked cores, not just overall usage. Though probably easily missed in the wall of text.
The max a core has hit in game in Tarkov was 83%, but its a spike, not continually sat there. Mostly they are all around 60%. Im checking with HWinfo. It shows Core / Thread usage 8 times, none sit high, though 1 or 2 do spike to 83% (thats the recording in max, anytime i look at it, its around 60%)

Mem is showing as 1600mhz in HWinfo, which is correct. Apparently the 3200mhz listed is because its dual clock, so its 1600, but clocks twice per cycle or something. Its just how HWinfo shows it according to google.

I appreciate, its most likely a CPU bottleneck. Just didnt want it to be so! I expected to see the cpu maxing out like it pretty much does in BF5. I know its different engines and optimisations. Just BF5 will sit at 80-90% CPU on every thread, for most of the game. Tarkov sits at 60% on every thread for most of the game.

Looks like im selling the 3080 then

Thanks for the input guys

 

[turbot1984]

It has to be cpu surely? When you look at how 3080 mullers even a 2080 in all the recent online reviews, where they are using 9900k/10900k generally.
I was in same boat with 6700k @ 4.7/ Hero VIII...its a great setup, but reluctantly, it was time to move to 10850k @ 5.0+. Games like Flight Sim 2020 really benefit.

 

[Rom]

I guess AMD is an option like some of you have said. I just default to Intel, as not used AMD since Athlon FX days, so know nothing about them currently. Would mean I can use the PCIE4 drives too i guess.

 

[Rom]

It has to be cpu surely? When you look at how 3080 mullers even a 2080 in all the recent online reviews, where they are using 9900k/10900k generally.
I was in same boat with 6700k @ 4.7/ Hero VIII...its a great setup, but reluctantly, it was time to move to 10850k @ 5.0+. Games like Flight Sim 2020 really benefit.

Oh I dont doubt its CPU, just hoped it being at 'only' 60% use per thread meant it might not be.

The card Is undoubtedly faster than my 1080ti. This is probably the longest Ive had a pc, built it July 2016, so got my use out of it. Just weighing up, I mean im still gaming at 100 fps in most games. I only really play Tarkov though, and whats the point in a 144hz monitor if im not getting the fps

Need to go and do some research on AMD it seems.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I’m not familiar with Tarkov, but there are occasions where a game engine simply can only go so fast, or there is an external factor (eg a while ago it used to be the case in star citizen that no matter what hardware you were rocking, you couldn’t get decent performance as the servers were actually holding you back).

You do appear to be hitting some sort of bottleneck despite not hitting 100% in any threads (sorry I missed that detail in your first post). From a quick google it seems there is a huge consensus that the game is CPU bound and it’s not unreasonable to assume that the 6700k simply can’t feed the 3080 fast enough.

I’ve also seen several comments about how memory speed yields big improvements, so while 3200 isn’t slow there’s still room for more.

Have you tried turning off hyper threading? Given this game doesn’t seem to be well optimised on the multi core side you may find a little more performance there (plus easier to see if any core is actually choking) and you could also potentially squeak out a few more frames by over clocking to 4.7ghz which should be achievable on most 6700k.

Zen3 5800x or 5900X would be a significant uplift in single thread (and enormous multi thread) over your 6700k, as would be a 10700k or 10900k. Personally I’d go for Zen 3 and some 3600mhz CL16 (or better) ram but the 10700k is a valid upgrade path if you prefer intel for whatever reason.

 

[chaparral]

and whats the point in a 144hz monitor if im not getting the fps

Just because the monitor supports 144hz doesn't mean you got have 144FPS

One the main reasons i myself like having a monitor that supports 100hz to 144hz is due to it stops most games from screen tearing without needing to enable Vsync

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Just came across this comment regarding tarkov FYI

“The game is actually capped at 120 FPS but there is a tweak to uncap FPS. You can uncap frames by turning v sync on in game and turning it off in Nvidia settings.”

 

[Stephen Garner]

Tarkov is one of my main games, it's not an optimised game.
There's no driver specific instructions either - Battle State Games have also played with the idea to move Tarkov to a new version of the engine at some point, which would make no sense at this stage of the game to optimise it.

Furthermore, Tarkov doesn't like SMT. Turn this off entirely, or at least for Tarkov with Process Lasso by manually selecting your cores. The above post about vsync is a known perf boost.

Run the game, via Nvidia CP, with performance enabled for things in the list, and run it using a power profile (1usmus, Bitsum etc) - using something Process Lasso to enforce this for the .exe automatically, rather than each time you load the game.

Tarkov also doesn't GPU load heavily, which makes it a predominately CPU intensive game. Turning more settings up in Tarkov helps this (which appears counter productive, but it does force the game to utilise GPU more). This is a known FPS booster.

Really, Tarkov is a badly made game in its current state. 0.17.x was a huge dip in performance a couple of months ago with the customs expansion as well. Reddit was alive with someone with an i9 10xxx processor, 2x SLI 2080Ti's and was struggling at 1440p for 90FPS. It's the game, it isn't you, I have a 3080, up from a 2080TI, and i have 5/10 FPS increases in some spots, but still dip below 70 on Customs.

 

[Rom]

I am running it with Vsync on in game, and off in NvidaCP.

Not tried hyperthreading or SMT. Will look into that now. If im honest,

Run the game, via Nvidia CP, with performance enabled for things in the list, and run it using a power profile (1usmus, Bitsum etc) - using something Process Lasso to enforce this for the .exe automatically, rather than each time you load the game.

This bit has me lost, im clearly not as geeky as I thought

From what you are all saying though about hyperthreading and SMT, is buying a new Ryzen 5950/5000 going to be the same? Having loads of cores but having to disable them?

Ive been reading up on Ryzen, so leaning towards a new build currently. Seems to tick all the boxes, once I decide on 5950 or 5000 that is.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Check individual cores/threads for bottlenecking, not overall CPU usage... you can hit 100% on the main thread (or indeed others) long before you hit 100% utilisation of the whole CPU.

Simply put if your GPU is sat at 60% you have a severe bottleneck, most likely the CPU. Comparisons between BFV and Tarkov are irrelevant because they are different games, different engines and don't use the CPU equally.

So ultimately those games not hitting 99-100% GPU usage show you are bottle necked elsewhere, likely (but not necessarily always) the CPU.

This.

CPU usage as 1 figure expressed as a percentage can be misleading. Most games these days have 1 master thread which runs on one core and then a bunch of other worker threads that'll run on other cores, but ultimately frame rate in the game is limited by that single master thread, which will typically max out 1 core of the CPU to near to 100% where as other worker threads may get delegated some work to do but rarely will they max out their cores. The simple fact is that >100fps is a hard target to push because with graphics and video cards you can just lower game settings to lower the demand on the GPU, but there's not really anything you can do to lower demand on the CPU. If your target is like 140fps then you're going to need a very fast clocked modern CPU to accompany your video card, like a 10700k @ 5Ghz+

There's nothing you can rally do from a software point of view, games are multi threaded better now than they used to be, but there's always one dominant primary thread which does the logic to control workflow to other threads and the speed that primary thread can work at is going to be a bottleneck of the CPU. And at high frame rates the CPU will be the bottleneck of the overall system. That's why fast core speed and high IPC are both important, and why Intel CPUs have been king for gaming for so long. Especially the highly overclocked K variants.

 

[smogsy]

This.

CPU usage as 1 figure expressed as a percentage can be misleading. Most games these days have 1 master thread which runs on one core and then a bunch of other worker threads that'll run on other cores, but ultimately frame rate in the game is limited by that single master thread, which will typically max out 1 core of the CPU to near to 100% where as other worker threads may get delegated some work to do but rarely will they max out their cores. The simple fact is that >100fps is a hard target to push because with graphics and video cards you can just lower game settings to lower the demand on the GPU, but there's not really anything you can do to lower demand on the CPU. If your target is like 140fps then you're going to need a very fast clocked modern CPU to accompany your video card, like a 10700k @ 5Ghz+

There's nothing you can rally do from a software point of view, games are multi threaded better now than they used to be, but there's always one dominant primary thread which does the logic to control workflow to other threads and the speed that primary thread can work at is going to be a bottleneck of the CPU. And at high frame rates the CPU will be the bottleneck of the overall system. That's why fast core speed and high IPC are both important, and why Intel CPUs have been king for gaming for so long. Especially the highly overclocked K variants.

not totally true

there's not really anything you can do to lower demand on the CPU. If your target is like 140fps then you're going to need a very fast clocked modern CPU to accompany your video card, like a 10700k @ 5Ghz+

you can always up the resolution

 

[fx1]

Hi,


I was lucky enough to get a FTW Ultra this week, but so far, regretting my purchase.

Now i knew there would be some CPU bottle neck, but the main game i play shows little improvement at all over my 1080ti FTW.


Ill post my specs, what ive got in which games etc. Hopefully there is some ideas, if not, think ill be selling my 3080. As dont really want to build a new pc until Intel offer a new CPU, with PCIe 4/5, which is apparently 2022!. Seems counter intuitive to build one now, when I cant even make use of the new PCIe 4 M2 drives etc. Its not like my pc is terrible, or unplayable, I just thought a fancy new GPU would get me to my 140 fps target.


Maximus Hero 8

6700k @ 4.5ghz

32gb Corsair @ 3200mhz

Samsung M2 SSD

EVGA 1080ti FTW / EVGA 3080 FTW Ultra (not at the same time!)

1440p / 144 hz


My main game is Escape from Tarkov, which i gather is not very well optimised. Then the odd bit of BF5.

Ive not changed any settings in games (unless it was super sample / DXR for testing). Base settings are Borderless, tested on same maps, same place etc. 39


1080ti

Tarkov 90-105 fps. Fullscreen gives me 115 fps solid. 45% CPU 90% GPU usage (Fullscreen menu gives me 260+fps)

If i super sample to 2x 70 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 60-70% CPU 90% GPU. This seems capped, might have set it to 140 for gsync in a file somewhere and forgot about it?

Witcher 3 85-90 fps. 99% GPU


3080

Tarkov 110-120 fps. 60% CPU 60% GPU. Fullscreen only increase 5 fps. (Fullscreen menu only 140 ish?!)

Super sample 2x 90-100 fps (testing only)

BF5 140 fps. 80-90% CPU. DXR on 130-135 fps. Again, think ive capped this in a cfg somewhere @ 140 for gsync years ago

Witcher 3 120-130 fps. 99% GPU, now this is an decent gain!


Witcher has a decent improvement, kind of what I hoped for in Tarkov. Ive logged in HWinfo, and Tarkov cpu will spike to 82%, but mostly its sat around 60% on the 3080. Now BOTTLENECK i hear and know, but BF5 CPU sits 80% plus a lot of the time, and gets more fps. Is this just poor optimisation? Can i do anything to fix it?

Tarkov doesnt have many settings to even ramp up, and make the card work harder.

I have the power level for card to 105%, PerfCap is VRel, card is drawing close to 400W, its not limiting to thermal or power. When i say CPU use, im checking cores, not just overall. So 1 core isnt maxxing out etc.


Hoping someone has some ideas, right now, i have a very fancy GPU for in my eyes, not much gain in the game i play.


Thanks

what resolution is your monitor?

 

[Rom]

Im on a 27" Acer Predator, 1440p 144hz

I tried a while back getting my 6700K over 4.5, but it was taking a load of voltage and I got scared

Just seen Intel gen 11 is Q1 2021. Only lack of experience is making me question AMD over Intel at the moment.

 

[Rom]

Furthermore, Tarkov doesn't like SMT. Turn this off entirely, or at least for Tarkov with Process Lasso by manually selecting your cores. The above post about vsync is a known perf boost.

Run the game, via Nvidia CP, with performance enabled for things in the list, and run it using a power profile (1usmus, Bitsum etc) - using something Process Lasso to enforce this for the .exe automatically, rather than each time you load the game.

I ran it with Lasso, hyperthreading off, bitsum max power mode, and tried again with Induce Performance Mode. Didnt make much difference, only a few FPS, not enough to be sure it wasnt just a change of weather in game etc.
Fullscreen is now working properly, Id imagine a bug with Tarkov. So in menu i get 400 fps now with 3080. Still the same in game though.

Tried 0.5 x sampling, fps stayed within a few fps. So as you've all said, think its safe to say the cpu is the issue. Compounded by Tarkov being a poorly optimised game.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

*is Q1 (which almost always means end of the Quarter so expect 23:59 31st March lol) until it gets pushed back again, and if it does then you’ll be thinking it’s only a couple more months until we start hearing about Zen4.

Intel have been caught with their pants down the last couple of years and they still haven’t pulled them up... AMD has been embarrassing them repeatedly for general productivity workloads and it appears has finally managed to claim the gaming crown too leaving intel with no bastion to fall back on.

I moved from Intel to AMD when I went 6700k - 3900X and I have no regrets at all, I will continue to just buy whichever offers me the best product in the price range and now I just don’t think there’s any argument that works in intel's favour.